Cyanogenmod on Desire HD

Its been almost 10 months since I got my hands on HTC Desire HD phone and had got a decent update to 2.3 from HTC site. But the only issue was the battery hogging HTC Sense and apps like stocks, weather eating my battery and 3G data. Who cares about the weather in bangalore? Just go out and enjoy the sun / rains..

Ok coming back to rooting the phone..  It just took me few google searches to decide the best custom rom in android market was cyanogenmod. For more info of custom roms visit – http://www.cyanogenmod.com/.  To install the custom rom’s you need root access to your phone. HTC provides boot loader for certain phones (http://htcdev.com/bootloader) but I was not going to wait for them to release for my desire HD. So decided to take a risk, void my warranty and go ahead with unlocking the phone.

Warning: Please note you are doing this at your own risk! There is a high chance that this might damage your device, or make it inoperable.

THIS GUIDE IS PURELY FOR EDUCATION

What you need :

• HTC Sync (or ADB drivers)
• Desire HD with build number 1.72 or higher (would be downgraded to 1.32)
• Make sure the battery is fully charged
• HxD Hex Editor.
• stock 1.32 PD98IMG.zip
• Downgrade folder
• File Manager
• Easy Radio tool.
• CyanogenMod Desire HD 7.03
• CyanogenMod Google Apps

Firstly is to create a GoldCard SD card. By doing so you wont be getting the “CID Incorrect” error message while unlocking in the next step.

Procedure

1. Go to android market and search for GoldCard Helper and install it on your phone.
2. Run the app and note down Card:mmc2, Reverse CID’ value, making sure to use mmc2 and not mmc1.
3. Go to http://psas.revskills.de/?q=goldcard site and paste your reverse CID number along with your personal mail address.
4. Check you mailbox and download the goldcard image to your computer.
5. Launch HxD hex editor on your computer by right-clicking it and clicking ‘Run as Administrator’.
6. Mount your SD card to your computer, using your phone.
7. Go to ‘Extra’ menu > ‘Open Disk’.
8. Select Removable Disk (which should be your SD card) under Physical Disk (and NOT logical disk), uncheck ‘Open as Readonly’ and click OK.
9. Go to the ‘Extra’ > ‘Open Disk Image’ and open the goldcard image downloaded in Step 5.
10. Select ’512 (Hard disks/Floppy disks)’ as the sector size when prompted and click ‘OK’.
11. In the goldcard image tab, go to ‘Edit’ > ‘Select All’ and then ‘Edit’ >’Copy’.
12. In the ‘Removable Disk’ tab, highlight offset (line) 00000000 to offset (line) 00000170 including the 00000170 line and go to  ’Edit’ menu > ‘Paste Write’.
13. Click ‘File’ > ‘Save’ and accept any warning that you get.

Now that your SD card is ready for downgrading. Follow the procedure to downgrade to 1.32

• Download the attached file from here (right click to save file as) <Downgrade folder>
• Extract the file to reveal a downgrade folder and copy it onto your C drive
• Download this file stock 1.32 PD98IMG.zip
• Connect Desire HD to a computer. Charge only, USB Debugging enabled!
• Open Command prompt and navigate to the downgrade folder
• If you placed the downgrade folder in your c: drive type in cd/Downgrade
• It should show C:\Downgrade>
• Carefully type in the following commands one by one

adb push psneuter /data/local/tmp

adb push misc_version /data/local/tmp

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/psneuter

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/misc_version

adb shell /data/local/tmp/psneuter

adb shell

NOTE: You should have the “#” sign instead of the “$”. If you do, you have temporary root, and can continue on.

/data/local/tmp/misc_version -s 1.31.405.3

If you did not get root access then follow these commands :

adb push misc_version /data/local/tmp

adb push fre3vo /data/local/tmp

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/fre3vo

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/misc_version

adb shell

./data/local/tmp/fre3vo -debug -start FBB00000 -end FFFFFFFF

cd /data/local/tmp

./misc_version -s 1.31.405.6

• Copy PD98IMG.zip to your SD card.  Don’t extract it and don’t rename the ZIP file.
• On the computer, open terminal and run the following command:.

adb reboot bootloader

• Use Volume up/down keys on the HTC Desire HD for navigation and Power key for confirmation. Select Fastboot to flash the 1.32.405.6 firmware.

Wait now till the downgrade is complete. Next step is to unlock the phone and gain root access. To root the phone we need visionary software and it is placed in the downgrade folder. File : com.modaco.visionaryplus.r14.apk. Copy this file onto your phone and run this apk file using File Manager or any software of your choice which can run apk files. Once the visionary is running follow these steps :

• Check “Set system r/w after root”
• click Temproot now wait patiently till it finishes.
• once you have successfully Temprooted
• Click PermRoot the device and wait for it to restart the Device.

Once you are done you have root access to your phone. The next step is to S-off the device.

• Open the the Desire hd radio tool.
• Select Radio S-Off and run it!!

Now you have an android 2.2 build 2.32 phone with root access which is ready for installation of custom roms 🙂

Installing CyanogenMod (copied from cyanogens mode site)

•  Download the latest version of CyanogenMod.
•  Optional: Download the Google Apps for the device.
•  Place the CyanogenMod update.zip file on the root of the SD card.
•  Optional: Place the Google Apps .zip on the root of the SD card also.
•  Boot into the ClockworkMod Recovery using visionary tool.
• Once the device boots into the ClockworkMod Recovery, use the side volume buttons to move around.
• Optional: Select backup and restore to create a backup of current installation
• Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset.
• Select the option to Wipe cache partition.
• Select Install zip from sdcard.
• Select Choose zip from sdcard.
• Select the CyanogenMod update.zip.
• Optional: Install the Google Apps by performing steps 7 – 9 again and choosing the Google Apps update.zip.
• Once the installation has finished, select +++++Go Back+++++ to get back to the main menu, and select the Reboot system now option. The HTC Desire HD should now boot into CyanogenMod.

Enjoy the new features for cyonogenmod and complete access of your phone. 🙂